


Devil's Song

by stxrwxrs



Series: Elements of War [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, AtLA AU, gabriel is jesse's father figure sorry not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 01:39:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10629492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stxrwxrs/pseuds/stxrwxrs
Summary: He remembers the night his father died.





	

There is a spirit that haunts his dreams and reaches for him every night.

 

When he closes his eyes, he sees his father’s face. The scars over his cheekbones, the dark lull of his eyes, scruffy hair that trails from just above his lip to his chin. He can hear his voice too. On the hard nights, the ones where the thunder drowns out any peace, his thoughts are narrated by his father’s voice instead of his own.

 

There are days when the sun feels like the fire that killed his father. That’s what he’s taught himself to feel, to say. When they ask about his sister though….that’s when he stammers.

 

“My father was a good man,” he shrugs in a bar, “a little rough around the edges, stuck his own dang foot in his mouth a whole bunch, but a good man.”

 

“What happened to him?”

 

“Dead, long time ‘go.”

 

He smokes now more than ever and laughs at himself, chewing dried roots in between his teeth, “I’m blamin’ this habit on you, old man.” No matter how loud he says it, there’s still no one there to hear.

 

He’s roaming the near abandoned streets of a small village miles away from Ba Sing Se when he hears death’s voice. It’s coarse and strained and calls out to him. The man turns his head, looking up and down for a shadow, a spirit.

 

There’s nothing.

 

**_“McCree.”_ **

 

He fidgets with his gloved hands, rolling fingers together before turning away, ignoring the pang deep down in his chest. _He’s alive, you know he’s alive._

 

The night his father had been murdered, he’d been burned. Maybe _too literally_ , he considers as he turns over his metallic limb. He’d been burned in the blaze that had taken out the last column supporting centuries worth of nomadic culture.

 

_“Get out of here, Jesse!”_

 

They’d been played. The Fire Nation had set them up and now sat in waiting to watch what was left of The Order burn. There had been silence then chaos. The nomads, the monks, they had cried out and had been met with nothing but the song of the devil. His father and the commander had gone in and never came out.

 

_“Gabe! Where are you- Morrison!”_

 

Then there was the realization that they only one who had been truly played was the commander, and his father- his father had been struck down by the spirit of death itself.

 

_“The temple can’t hold on much longer! Get out of there!”_

 

Thinking on it now, maybe he had been set up the whole time too. 

 

 _"Sometimes men lust after too much power, and destroy themselves and everyone around them to get it."_ That's what Amari had told him. She had seen it coming, had watched the anger boil in his father's eyes and seen the surprise in the commander's. 

He had cried, he’s not afraid to admit that. He had barreled in the wreckage to find his father with tears stinging his eyes and flames licking his flesh. Others would say that was a life changing mistake.

 

Looking down at the lasting effects, he doesn’t remember anything else even being an option.

 

Tonight, he sits against the base of a tree, smoking dried leaves and whistling a few melodies to himself. Above him sits the spirit of death, whose presence feels like wet, cold sand. The man sitting below knows, _he must know_.

  
“I’m blamin’ this habit on you, old man,” he says.


End file.
